Toward the end of my month of yoga teacher training at Kripalu last spring, each person in my class was handed a sheet of paper and a pen and asked to write the words “What I want to tell you is. . .”
The assignment, then, was to write a letter, a letter from the radiant, wide-open, yoga-saturated, heart-full self of that moment to some beleaguered, tired and doubting future self who might one day be in need of a little bucking up.
These letters, we were assured, would arrive in our mailboxes at the right time.
There were so many wild and wonderful and out-of-the- box experiences crammed into those thirty intense days of teacher training that I didn’t even remember writing a letter to myself. When a hand-addressed envelope arrived in my mailbox a week ago, I didn’t recognize the writing, which was much lovelier than my typical, hasty, printing-cursive hybrid. It seemed odd that the return address was my own. I sat down outside and read words that I had no memory of putting to paper. It felt as if I’d suddenly heard from my own best friend from long ago, a soul mate whose memory I cherish but who I haven’t seen or even thought about for a long time. To get a letter from her, out of the blue, was an unexpected gift. To realize that this distant, nearly forgotten person seemed to know exactly how I’d been feeling lately, and could say just what I needed to hear was like having an unspoken prayer answered.
“When it’s a choice between love and fear,” my wiser self told my struggling self, “choose love.” Tears rolled down my cheeks. Sometimes, when things are really hard and scary and not the way I want them to be at all, choosing love over fear seems crazy and impossible. But of course, love really is the only good choice. It’s just that choosing it can sometimes require so much more courage than I think I have.
In two days, both of my sons will head back to school. At our house right now, the bedrooms look like they’ve been ransacked, full of clothes and twisted bedding and backpacks and shoes and notebooks. (Both boys claim that what’s going on up there is a “deep clean”; to me it looks more like a deep shuffle.) The TV is tuned to the U.S. Open. The kitchen has been turned into Poster Rolling Central — Jack is working for his dad, earning money by stuffing hundreds of posters into mailing tubes. Steve is affixing labels. Henry is deleting two thousand songs from his iPod. The washing machine is running nonstop. The food is getting eaten as fast as I can cook it. As I sit here typing on the porch, I can hear the three guys laughing in the other room, commenting on the tennis, enjoying this last full day of summer vacation. Tonight we’ll go out for our ritual meal at Chili’s (democracy prevails on this front; alas, the vote for Chili’s is always 3 to 1) and to see the new Steve Carrell movie. It’s all good.
Except for the moments in the past week that have been awful. The ones that have pushed me to the outer limits of my abilities as a parent. There have been some of those, too. If you’ve ever shared your life with teenagers, you can easily supply your own details. And you probably also know that giving an adolescent the space he/she needs in order to grow up is as necessary as it is risky. Kids make mistakes, and our job as parents is to step back and allow them to fall, and then to make sure, too, that they actually learn what it’s like to hit the ground.
“I feel completely lost,” my son Jack said to me the other afternoon. I knew what he meant. The truth was, I was feeling pretty lost myself. But then I suddenly realized that I did have something to offer him. “You know,” I said, “you don’t have to figure everything out now. All you need to do is make the next good choice for this moment. You can certainly do that.” And then I left him there to figure it out. I put on my sneakers and went out for a run.
Choosing fear would have kept me in my chair, talking, trying to repair the damage and make things right for him. Choosing love means allowing him to own the struggle that rightfully belongs to him. It means having faith that this, too, shall pass.
“Parenting requires courage,” my friend Bruce wrote in a profoundly affecting essay this week. “Courage to set limits and bear anger; courage to let go and tolerate fear that our kids may come to harm; courage to trust that we and our children are enough.”
That pretty much says everything I want to hold on to during these final days of summer. I could pray for all sorts of things as my children make their way out into the world, but I doubt that even my most fervent appeals for their safety, health, and well-being would do a single bit of good. Those pleas are born of fear, of my own sense of helplessness in the face of dangers and environments and situations that aren’t mine to control. And so, I pray instead for the only thing I can really hope for: courage. Because courage, of course, is love in the face of fear. Somehow, after a month of yoga and meditation, a soft, vulnerable part of me knew that very well. Back in the world, faced with problems I can’t solve and children I can’t protect, I forgot.
Put two parents and two nearly grown young men in a house together at the end of a long summer, and it’s probably inevitable that everyone involved will do or say something that they will later regret. On this peaceful, companionable Sunday morning, I can now cut us all that much slack. The good news is: choosing love over fear brings us back to one another. And as soon as we stop feeling afraid of the dark, we are free to enjoy the simple pleasures of a few moments of light. As Bruce writes, “To fully feel fear, and then manage it, quell it, contextualize it, rise above it . . . now we’re talking courage.”
Yes.
As always, you have put a voice to the feelings I, too, am living with today. Knowing that soon, the house will be too quiet. Too clean. Waiting for the next ‘surge’ of family life…we are also enjoying this last ‘hurrah’ of summer. Wishing you the courage to choose love, and choosing the same for myself. ~kim
Although my daughter is just nearly a year old, I already feel that fear nibbling away at me. Of course it has its place biologically speaking, but for the most part fear is such a disabling force, an unproductive feeling that wreaks havoc in lives. I love your advice to Jack. When I used to work as a career counselor, clients often came to me in the throes of chaos, looking to me for divine answers. The best I could usually offer was, “Just worry about the next step. Worry about the step after that when the time comes.”
Katrina,
As usual, your essay is so thoughtful and so filled with love. I think you choose love over fear every day. I remember making my Cursillo weekend on Long Island, and writing a “letter to self,” and then receiving it in the mail months later. It was an amazing gift. I think there are many times in parenting when we have to choose that love. Your boys are back off to school, and my #3, a daughter, is moving into an apartment in Brooklyn, dragging a U-haul of stuff, too many, way too many clothes, and a dog that she can’t afford. I am letting her go, although am praying for her every step of the way. My yoga mat helps me to let go of the fear (most of the time)!
I was sitting in church today discouraged and sad, as raising three teenagers often can put you in that place. I knew that there was no way the pastors (men) could offer me any hope as they could never understand a Mother’s heart. I chose to read alone, and in collecting my thoughts in prayer, trying not to be teary-eyed, I prayed, “I sure could use some encouragment from Katrina Kenison.” When I got home I saw your email. God was listening and surely had a hand in what I needed today. Thanks for your encouraging words.
Hi Katrina,
I say yes, absolutely yes—so happy to be together with you in the quest for courage. Thus sending Love and All Good Wishes for you, your family and all of our collective strivings for courage and love.
Namaste
I don’t know how you do it Katrina. I have recently gone through a very difficult time with my teenage son. The last few months have been emotional, to say the least! Yet, I know one thing, my love for him endures. My worries of what will be and what could have been are just that. My worries. I have to let him grow and take the path he decides to take. Time will tell. Thank you for printing those everyday experiences. Your words bring comfort to every Mother at some point in their life.
Yes. Nicely said.
WOW! All I can think of is “wow”. As my son is heading back to Ohio from Wisconsin and my daughter heads back to school an hour away but in a new apartment with new roommates, and my other daughter heads back to high school, I see myself in the fear mode worrying about their safety and well-being. I know I tend to try to pave the way for them and have to learn to let them lead. I will pray for courage. Thank you Katrina for showing the way.
I loved Bruce’s last essay, just as I love this one you just wrote. Thank you for this wisdom. I want to print out this essay and mail it to myself in 8 years when my son is a teenager.
Not only did you give a great gift to Jack, but to me as well with: “All you need to do is make the next good choice for this moment. You can certainly do that.”
I have a feeling this will be my new mantra for a while. I am so grateful that I have mentors like you and Bruce for this long and wonderful and terrifying journey of parenthood.
Beautiful, Katrina. As usual.
Wow… thanks-so true. So hard not to worry and try to control. Your words are encouraging…thank you.
I really needed to read and absorb this today as well. We all can benefit by
just making the next good choice for this moment. My son is in a state of flux, having graduated and not able to find a job. It is so hard not to do it all for him but this is his journey not mine. your words always seem to fit what is going on at the time. Thank You.
Katrina…
I had to search my soul for this courage in the biggest of ways a few weeks ago when I sent my daughter Devin back to college. Only this time she wasn’t returning to NYC (which requires its own version of courage)..I was sending her off for her Junior Semester abroad in Africa.
You sum my thoughts up perfectly in the sentence..”my own sense of helplessness in the face of dangers and environments and situations that aren’t mine to control”.
Saying good-bye that day at the airport was certainly the most terrified I have ever been as a parent.
A few days later, my daughter quoted me in the blog she’s keeping of her adventures in Africa..as the one who taught her to “take big bites”.
I guess this is what it’s all about, huh?
Loving. Letting go. Learning lessons.
It sure is scary though…
Stephanie
I love the advice you gave to your son–to just focus on making the next right choice instead of trying to navigate through everything. Sometimes it’s paralyzing, all of this thinking.
It’s advice worth holding onto.
What a comfort it is that this time of year puts many of us in the same state of conflict as we pack up our kids and send them off. What a blessing, Katrina, that you put these feelings into words. It makes me realize that my thoughts are not irrational, and gives me faith that my daughter is well equipped to choose her next steps wisely. I am in awe of my daughter and her friends as their choices encompass experiences worldwide, and I salute their passion. Now all I need to do is have the courage to let them confidently spread their wings and fly.
Thanks so much, Katrina, for this beautiful post. I am so thankful for the reminder to choose love over fear. I will carry that with me as I move through my week.
Wishing you love and not fear as you celebrate your fall send-offs!
Such wisdom. I remember when I was pregnant with my eldest daughter (now 14) and I started thinking of all that could go wrong. Worried. I stopped and realized I was establishing a pattern of faith or fear. Reading your words now, the love or fear contrast, adds a wonderful dimension. Thank you.
btw, Mitten Strings for God has been a wonderful companion as I raise my three girls. I’ve given it as a gift to new mothers with such joy. I’m finally reading The Gift of an Ordinary Day. Purchased it as soon as it was published, but I suppose, like your receiving the letter, the words are arriving to me at the perfect time.
Courage is love? Why didn’t I tie that together? I feel better already Katrina! Thank you.
Thanks to Marion Roach Smith, author of The Memoir Project, I found this lovely essay on Facebook. I too struggle, even as an older mother and grandmother, not to try to solve my kids’ problems. Love the example of offering the next choice idea and then leaving. Wise mom. “Perfect love casts out fear” every time.
This is a beautiful post, as always Katrina.
I am struck specifically by this part:
“You know,” I said, “you don’t have to figure everything out now. All you need to do is make the next good choice for this moment. You can certainly do that.” And then I left him there to figure it out. I put on my sneakers and went out for a run.
It reminds me of something you told me many months ago, by email, as I raced to LA to be at my dad’s side as he fought the terrible disease he was given.
You coined “it” “compassionate witnessing” and it was just what I needed to hear and understand back then. In fact, your email came at just the right moment back then for me… for my heart and for my process. Just as your letter arrived perfectly timed by the Universe. Oh how it knows!
You helped me see that my job was not to always fix things (my kids, my dad’s failing body, a situation, etc.), but sometimes just to be in the moment, to understand, to witness and to love. Compassionate witnessing is indeed beautiful and healthly and validating.
I couldn’t fix my dad and he would pass away after a long struggle, but I did provide the compassionate witnessing you recommended… and boy did it make the path better for me… and for him!
You have done the same for your son.
How lucky he is and how lucky you are!
X
Meredith
~ Meredith From A Mother Seeking
A Mother Seeking…